168 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cuar. X
farm, flour mill, and bakery, so is there a final transforma-
tion within the human body itself. It is a sort of factory,
the products of which are the only final uncanceled income
of the consumer. In a complete view of productive pro-
cesses, the human machine is no more to be left out of con-
sideration than machines which handle the wheat in its
prior stages. ;
All objective income, therefore, is entirely erased or
negatived as soon as we apply our accounting to the body
of the recipient. The services of which that income consists
empty out, as it were, their quota into the human body, but
the ultimate result is not finally received until it emerges
in the stream of consciousness.
We define subjective income, then, as the stream of con-
sciousness of any human being. All his conscious life,
from his birth to his death, constitutes his subjective in-
come. Sensations, thoughts, feelings, volitions, and all
psychical events, in fact, are a part of this income stream.
All these conscious experiences which are desirable are posi-
tive items of income, or services; all which are undesirable
are negative items, or disservices. We have avoided ex-
pressly the statement that subjective income consists of
pleasure, or of pleasure minus pain. These terms have been
too loosely used by economists, and such use has involved
them in unnecessary controversy with psychologists. It is
better to avoid such disputes, and content ourselves with
the simple statement that subjective events which are de-
sirable are services, and those which are undesirable are
disservices. This statement conforms to the definition of
services and disservices originally given, and does not com-
mit us to any psychological theory of pleasure or pain.
Some psychologists would maintain that pain, to an ascetic,
may be just as much an object of desire as pleasure.!
! For instance, of the founder of the Sacred Heart Order, we read
that, —
“Her love of pain and suffering was insatiable. . . . ‘Nothing
a —
